What are your thoughts on the movement to establish Ministries and Departments of Peace in governments worldwide?

TUTU: It’s an extraordinary idea and, it fills one with a great deal of excitement and exhilaration, and it sounds crazy, but then I think it was crazy when Gandhi said we’re going to work so that eventually India is free. It must have been crazy when Martin Luther King Jr. also said we’re going to make civil rights a real issue in the United States, and maybe when Nelson Mandela and others said one day apartheid will be no more, that we need those like yourselves who dream dreams and say, “It is possible. It is possible for people to know that war is not natural.”

People have been able to live peacefully together, but if they live peacefully together after war, why should they have war first before they can realize that it is a great deal better. War is not nice to children, it’s not nice to people, it’s not nice to the environment.

And so I say go for it. This is marvellous. Go for it and really be crazy and say, one day we’ll ask, “Why were we so stupid for so long because of something so obvious?” Saying let us put our massive investment that we are putting right now in instruments of death and destruction, let us put them into something that is creative, that is life-enhancing teaching kids that there are ways of resolving differences that don’t need to be violent. You can sit down and ultimately say, “You know, actually, an enemy is a friend waiting to be made.”

Photo and interview by Mark Tompkins
For the Peace Alliance
At the Quest for Global Healing
May, 2006, Bali, Indonesia

ministry for peace

Invitation

7 pm Wednesday 26th April
Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, Embankment, SW1
Hosted by Elfyn Llwyd, MP

Iran: How did we get here?

Neil Crompton
Head of Iran Co-Ordination Group,
Foreign & Commonwealth Office

+

Can Conflict Transformation tools avert a military intervention?

Kai Frithof Brand-Jacobsen
Co-Director, Transcend and Director of the Peace Action,
Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR)

There is no charge for this meeting. Please arrive early to get through security system

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ministry for peace

Afternoon Workshop

with

Kai Brand-Jacobsen of Transcend*

COULD THE TRANSCEND CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION APPROACH
RESOLVE THE LOOMING CONFLICT WITH IRAN?

2 – 5pm, Thursday 27th April 2006

Mahatma Gandhi Hall
Indian Students Centre
41 Fitzroy Square, London W1

ministry for peace

INVITATION

7pm Wednesday March 1st, 2006

Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, Embankment, London SW1

(Entrance is round the corner from Westminster tube station)

You are warmly invited to attend this urgently convened ministry for peace meeting on the Iranian situation. The aim is to improve all our understandings about what is happening at the level of governments and to hear informed views about what may or may not happen in the coming months.

The meeting will be hosted by John McDonnell, MP

Report To First ministry for peace Annual General Meeting

Held In The Grand Committee Room, House Of Commons On March 8th, 2005

To read the full report, please click here

To dowload a copy of the report in PDF format, please click here.

The War Hotel - Psychological Dynamics in Violent Conflict

Arlene Audergon came and spoke at our meeting on 18th January in the Grand Committer room. If you were not able to be there she has kindly given us a copy of her presentation.

Click Here To View Presentation

mfp One Day Event - 3rd April 2004

"Peace builder or warmonger? Britain's role in the 21st Century"

If you missed the event or would like the opportunity of hearing our excellent panel of speakers again, a DVD has now been made of the day. Please go to http://www.jeweltree.co.uk